Young children’s peer interactions involve their use of interactional resources to organise, manage and participate in their social worlds. Investigation of children’s employment of interactional resources highlights how children participate in peer interaction and their social orders, providing insight into their active construction and management of their social worlds. Frequently, these interactions are described by adults as ‘play’. The term play is often used to describe children’s activities in early childhood education, and constructed in three main ways: as educative, as enjoyable, and as an activity of children. Play in educational settings is often constructed, and informed by, adult agendas such as learning and is often part of the educational routine. This study shows how children work with a different set of agendas to those routinely ascribed by adults, as they actively engage with local education orders, and use play for their own purposes as they construct their own social orders. By examining children’s peer interactions, and not describing these activities as play, the focus becomes the construction and organisation of their social worlds. In so doing, this study investigates some interactional resources that children draw upon to manage their social orders and organise their peer interactions. This study was conducted within an Australian, non-government elementary school. The participants were children in a preparatory year classroom (children aged 4 – 6 years). Over a one month period, children’s naturally occurring peer interactions within ‘free play’ were video-recorded. Selected video-recorded episodes were transcribed and analysed, using the approaches of ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis. These methodologies focus on everyday, naturalistic data, examining how participants orient to and produce social action. The focus is on the members’ perspectives, that of the children themselves, as they interact. Ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis allow for in-depth examination of talk and action, and are used in this study to provide a detailed account of the children’s interactional strategies. Analysis focused on features of children’s situated peer interaction, identifying three interactional resources upon which the children drew as they constructed, maintained, and transformed their social orders. The interactional resources included: justification; category work, in particular the category of mother; and the pretend formulation of place. The children used these interactional resources as a means of managing peer participation within interactions. First, the children used justification to provide reasons for their actions and to support their positions. Justifications built and reinforced individual children’s status, contributing to the social organisation of their peer group. Second, the children negotiated and oriented to categories within the pretend frame of ‘families’. The children’s talk and actions jointly-constructed the mother category as authoritative, enabling the child, within the category of mother, to effectively organise the interaction. Third, pretense was used by the children to negotiate and describe places, thus enabling them to effectively manage peer activity within these places. For a successful formulation of a place as something other than it actually was, the children had to work to produce shared understandings of the place. Examining instances of pretense demonstrated the highly collaborative nature of the children’s peer interactions. The study contributes to sociological understandings of childhood. By analysing situated episodes of children’s peer interaction, this study contributes empirical work to the sociology of childhood and insight into the interactional work of children organising their social worlds. It does this by closely analysing social interactions, as they unfold, among children. This study also makes a methodological contribution, using ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and membership categorization analysis in conjunction to analyse children’s peer interactions in an early childhood setting. In so doing, the study provides alternative ways for educators to understand children’s interactions. For example, adult educational agendas, such as the educative value of play, can be applied to examine children’s family play, highlighting the learning opportunities provided through pretend role play, or indicating children’s understanding of adult roles. Alternatively, the children’s interaction could be subjected to fine-grained analysis to explicate how children construct shared understandings of the category of mother and use it to organise their interaction. Rather than examining the interaction to discern what children are learning, the interaction is examined with a focus on how children are accomplishing everyday social practices. Close analysis of children’s everyday peer interaction enables the complex interactional work of managing, and participating in, social order within an early childhood setting to be explicated. This offers educators insight into children’s social worlds, described not as play, but as the construction and negotiation of social order.

No description available.

No description available.

Due to an educational system that tends to prioritize receptive reading and listening skills and a concomitant lack of opportunities to engage in meaningful spoken production in the target language outside of the class, many English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in Japan struggle to develop their English speaking abilities even after many years of study. For many of these learners, post-secondary coursework presents a first opportunity to engage in consistent active oral production of the language in interactive communicative situations, but how language abilities develop in this context over time is not well understood. This longitudinal, mixed methods research study explores the development of interactive second language (L2) speaking proficiency of Japanese university students throughout their first year of post-secondary study. The participants were 92 female students from five sections of a required oral communication course of which I was the instructor: 34 from two mid-proficiency sections and 58 from three low-proficiency sections. In addition to the standard curriculum for this course, these participants also completed a series of ten 10-minute discussion tasks in groups of three to four participants on personal information topics of general interest over the course of two 15-week semesters that comprise the academic year. All of the group discussion tasks were video-recorded and carried out under the same procedures: without any pre-task planning time but with a post-task transcription and reflection assignment. The first group discussion task was administered for training and instructional purposes and excluded from the data analyses leaving seven tasks conducted roughly one month apart throughout the academic year as well as one additional repeated task with the same group assignments completed at the end of each semester. In total, nine discussion tasks were carried out for analysis in this study. A number of quantitative measures were collected for this study at various points throughout the academic year. First, all of the group discussion performances were rated using an adapted rating scale consisting of criteria dedicated to complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) as well as interactional engagement and overall communicative effectiveness. Additional measures consisting of participant ratings assigned to topic difficulty and group member familiarity were collected via questionnaire after each discussion task. Furthermore, measures of extraversion and English-speaking self-efficacy were collected along with the three repeated tasks that spanned the entire year. Finally, initial and end-of-year scores on the TOEIC-IP test consisting only of listening and reading sections were used as measures of general English proficiency. To provide a richer understanding of the participants’ perceptions of their development as well the social and individual difference factors considered most directly relevant to the research questions, an embedded qualitative component consisting of two focus groups and one individual interview was also carried out. The results indicated that the participants in this study made small but significant improvements in their mean interactive English speaking abilities across both the three repeated tasks and between the most temporally distant earliest and latest new tasks administered in the first and second terms, accounting for relatively large amounts of the variance in the measures. Furthermore, the social and individual difference factors investigated were found to jointly predict 56% of the variance seen in the interactive English speaking measures for the three repeated tasks. Of these factors, the participants’ initial general proficiency scores, English speaking self-efficacy ratings, and averaged group member initial proficiency scores were found to be much stronger predictors than their topic difficulty, group member familiarity, and extraversion ratings. When the ratings given along the five rating scale dimensions were inspected, strong relationships were revealed among all of them, though particularly among the CAF rating measures. Tracking these relationships over time revealed that they tended to strengthen from one task to the next with the most readily identifiable changes found among the relationships between accuracy, interactional engagement, and overall communicative effectiveness. Finally, the qualitative component of this study revealed that the participants interviewed perceived changes in their conscious attention during the group discussion tasks shifting from accuracy concerns to speaking fluently/effectively, a general lack of concern for and attention to complexity throughout, and improvement in their interactional engagement over the course of the academic year. Furthermore, the interviewees were found to generally ascribe a high degree of influence on their resulting group discussion task speaking performances to both the topic prompts assigned and their group members’ personalities as well as to the complex interplay between group member proficiency and familiarity among other factors. Although a number of limitations should be taken into account, it is believed that the results of this study provide new, important insights into the longitudinal development of interactive English speaking proficiency in an EFL university context where learners have little engagement with target language beyond limited classroom contact hours. / Teaching & Learning

現今國中學生寫作動機與作文品質不佳是國內普遍的現象，而學校是國中學生的主要學習場所，因此本研究的探討旨趣在於瞭解校園中的三個主體：學生、同儕與教師，即文化資本、同儕互動以及內化判準，與國中學生寫作動機以及作文品質間的關係；並進一步瞭解國中生的文化資本、同儕互動、內化判準對寫作動機的預測情形以及前述四者對作文品質的預測情形。 本研究以163位國中二年級學生為研究對象，研究工具包括：研究者自編的「文化資本量表」、「同儕互動量表」、「內化判準量表」、「寫作動機量表」以及「作文評定量表」。此外，本研究以因素分析、信度分析、t考驗、單因子變異數分析、皮爾遜積差相關分析、典型相關分析以及多元迴歸分析進行量表與研究假設的驗證。 研究結果顯示： 1.當國中生擁有愈多的文化資本，其寫作動機也會愈高；而國中生擁有的文化資本多寡，與其作文品質無明顯的關係存在。 2.當國中生與同儕的互動頻率愈高時，會有愈高的寫作動機，且會有愈良好的作文品質。 3.當國中生對寫作判準的認同程度愈深時，會有愈高的寫作動機，且其作文品質會愈良好。 4.當國中生的寫作動機愈高時，其作文品質也會愈良好。此外，當國中生的寫作訊息性動機愈高時，其作文中也會有愈良好的新穎性表現；而國中生的寫作內在動機與控制性外在動機對作文中的新穎性表現沒有顯著的影響。 5.國中生已認同判準以及文化資本能顯著預測國中生的寫作動機，且國中生已認同判準是最主要的預測變項。 6.國中生已認同判準、訊息性外在動機以及同儕互動能顯著預測國中生的作文品質，且國中生已認同判準是最主要的預測變項。 為促成國中學生寫作動機以及作文品質之有效提升，本研究最後根據研究結果，對國民中學與國中教師提出幾點實務上之建議： 1.國中校園應多提供豐富的語文物理環境，並鼓勵學生多加運用；此外，鼓勵學生多參與多元的活動，累積生活經驗。 2.鼓勵國中同儕間建立分享的寫作學習社群，並積極地和同儕討論生活見聞。 3.協助學生掌握寫作領域中的批判性原則與標準。 4.著重國中生之寫作訊息性外在動機以及內在動機的培養。 並從研究議題與研究設計兩方面提出建議，作為後續研究之參考。 關鍵字：文化資本、同儕互動、內化判準、寫作動機、作文品質 / Low writing motivation and inferior composition quality has been a general phenomenon for current junior high students. In view of school as the main learning field, this research is to investigate how writing motivation and composition quality are related with cultural capital, peer interaction as well as writer’s internalized criteria, how the writing motivation is predicted by cultural capital, peer interaction as well as writer’s internalized criteria, and how the composition quality is predicted by cultural capital, peer interaction, writer’s internalized criteria and writing motivation. There are 163 students of grade 8 joining in this research. Five self-reported questionnaires, which are “cultural capital scale”,“peer interaction scale”,“writer's internalized criteria scale”, “writing motivation scale” and “composition quality scale” , designed by the researcher, were utilized to measure each variable respectively. Factor analysis, Cronbach alpha, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson relation coefficient, canonical correlation analysis and multiple regression were conducted to validate the questionnaires and verify the hypotheses. The results were as follows: 1. The more cultural capital, the higher the writing motivation were. However, cultural capital was not related with composition quality. 2. The junior high students, who interacted with classmates more frequently, have higher writing motivation and better composition quality. 3. The more important students identified the writing criteria, the better composition quality were. 4. When students owned higher writing motivation, their compositions also have better quality. Besides, when students have higher informational extrinsic motivation, their compositions were found more novel. However, neither of the intrinsic writing motivation nor controlling extrinsic motivation impacted the novel performance. 5. Both identified writing criteria and cultural capital were able to predict writing motivation significantly, the former variable is the most important one. 6. Composition quality was able to be explained by identified writing criteria, information extrinsic motivation and peer interaction significantly. Identified writing criteria is the most important variable among them. Based on our results, several suggestions were raised for the practical application of teachers. 1. The campus should be generated as an abundant linguistic surroundings and the school should encourage students to utilize those resources more frequently. Besides, school should inspired students to participate the various activities so as to enrich the living experiences. 2. The writing community should be encouraged to establish for sake of share of learning experience. The discussion regarding living experiences among classmates should also be promoted. 3. To help the students mater the critical principles and standard in writing field. 4. To generate both intrinsic and informational extrinsic motivation for junior high students. Keywords: cultural capital, peer interaction, writer's internalized criteria, writing motivation, composition quality

In my essay, I take as starting point stories where I experience that the school context does not take advantage of the possibilities offered by the youth leisure center in gathering information about the students’ knowledge development. In my text I am going to reflect upon my irritation, how I acted and why I acted in a certain way in different situations with students. The aim of my essay is to examine how can I, in my role as a youth leisure center educator act, so that my assessment of the students can be a complement to the school’s assessment. I am even going to investigate what possibilities and learning opportunities offer the youth leisure center in being a complement to the school’s assessment procedure of students. I my essay, I will reflect on my dilemma on the hand, and on the other hand, taking different approaches and points of view. I will discuss how I interpret my actions and experience myself, but also my colleagues in the situations with the students, linked to Dreyfus and Dreyfus’s model of skill acquisition, as well as analyze my attitude by using Aristotle’s concepts of wisdom and understanding. Further on, I will discuss how the youth leisure center can be a complement to school based on peer interaction in practice and development-pedagogical perspectives, as well as through analyzing various governing documents. I conclude my essay with a reflection on my research questions, and how I perceive my task as a youth leisure center teacher to collaborate with the school in assessing the students’ knowledge development. / I min essä utgår jag från berättelser där jag upplever att skolkontexten inte tar till vara fritidshemmens möjligheter till att kunna bidra med information vad gäller elevernas kunskapsutveckling. Jag kommer i texten reflektera över min irritation, hur jag gjorde och varför jag gjorde det jag gjorde i olika situationer tillsammans med elev. Syftet är att undersöka hur jag, i min roll som fritidslärare kan agera på fritidshemmet så min bedömning av eleven kan vara ett komplement till skolan. Jag kommer även utforska fritidshemmets möjligheter och lärmiljöer skulle kunna vara ett komplement till skolan vid bedömningar av elever. I min essä kommer jag reflektera, kritisera och perspektivera förhållningssätt och synvinklar i mitt dilemma. Jag kommer att beröra hur jag tolkar och upplever mig själv men även kollegor i situationer med elever kopplat till Dreyfus och Dreyfus utvecklingsstegen, men också reflektera i mitt görande som fritidslärare över förhållningssätt klokhet och förståelse utifrån Aristoteles filosofi. Vidare ska jag diskutera hur fritidshemmet kan vara ett komplement till skolan utifrån samlärande i praktiken och utvecklingspedagogiska perspektiv, samt analys av olika styrdokument. Jag avslutar min essä med en reflektion över mina frågeställningar, och hur jag själv ser på mitt uppdrag som fritidslärare i samverkan med skolan kopplat till elevernas kunskapsutveckling. / <p></p><p></p>

本篇論文目的在探討兒童在同儕對話中所使用的請求言語行為，研究問題如下：1.在同儕對話中，兒童採用哪些請求策略？、2.兒童使用哪些稱呼語(alerter)和修飾語(modification)來調整他們的請求言語行為?。研究語料來自兩人一組的兒童在玩耍時的對話，兒童的年紀在四歲三個月到五歲六個月之間(平均年齡為五歲三個月)。本研究主要採用Blum-Kulka等人的請求言語行為策略分類，包含中心行為策略(head act)、稱呼語(alerter）、修飾語(modification)三個部分。研究結果發現，在中心行為策略的三個策略中—直接請求、規約性間接請求、和非規約性間接請求，兒童使用較多的直接請求策略，特別是祈使語態句(mood derivable)，顯示出兒童在同儕互動中傾向使用直接且有效力的請求策略。研究結果也發現兒童會使用稱呼語和修飾語來調整請求言語行為；在稱呼語方面，兒童使用了呼喚語(vocative)和名字(name)這兩種表親密的稱呼語來吸引同儕的注意，顯示出兒童不只能判斷對話者的注意力，也知道他們與同儕之間的對等、親近關係；在修飾語方面，兒童使用較多的緩和修飾語(mitigating modifiers)，而在所有修飾語中，兒童最常使用的三種分別為語氣弱化詞(downtoner)、 原因解釋(grounder)、強化詞(intensifier)，另外，我們也發現到兒童有時會使用兩種以上的修飾語在單一個請求行為中，從兒童使用的各種修飾語結果顯示，兒童在做請求時，能考量不同情況和跟同儕間的關係來調整請求言語行為。本研究對於漢語兒童在同儕互動中的請求言語行為的使用，不僅顯示出他們的溝通技巧與語用能力，也反映出同儕互動的特性。 / The purpose of this study is to explore preschool children’s performance of requests in peer talk. We aim to investigate what request strategies children employ when interacting with peers and how children adjust their requests with alerters and modifications. The data analyzed were the natural conversations produced by dyads of children aged from 4;3 to 5;6 (mean age: 5;3). The analytical framework adopted in this study is mainly based on the categorization of Blum-Kulka et al. (1989), including the three components of head act, alerter, and modification. The results show that among direct request, conventionally indirect request and non-conventionally indirect request, children employed more direct request strategies, especially mood derivable. It reveals that children’s requests tend to be direct in interactions with peers as the use of direct requests is more effective to attain compliance. In addition, children were found to use alerters and modifications on some occasions to get attention and to lessen or aggravate the request force. There were two types of alerters used by the children, which were name and vocative, and vocative was used more frequently than name. The children’s use of the two intimate alerters indicates that not only can children assess the focus of their interlocutors’ attention, but also that they are aware of their equal and close relationships with their peers. Regarding the use of modifications, it was found that children used more mitigating modifiers than aggravating modifiers, and that the children used downtoner, grounder, and intensifier more frequently among the modifiers. Moreover, although the children commonly used one request with one modifier, there were some cases where the children used more than one modifier in one request. The diversity in the use of modified requests reveals the children’s sensitivity to the situations in which they and their peers are engaged, and their consideration for the maintenance of interpersonal relationships. It is concluded that Mandarin-speaking children’s use of requests not only demonstrates their communicative skills and pragmatic competence, but also reflects the nature of peer interactions.

No description available.

The purpose of the empirical study is to determine the nature of the peer pressure that boys experience at a single-gender school. A literature study was conducted on single-gender education as opposed to co-education as well as the phenomenon of peer pressure during adolescence and the factors that might influence peer pressure. An empirical investigation was conducted involving 221 adolescent boys. The results showed that boys in single-gender schools experience more positive than negative peer pressure. No significant differences were found between the peer pressure of boys at a single-gender school and those at a co-educational school. Motivation and relationship with peers were identified as the two most important variables relating to peer pressure. Guidelines for parents, teachers, and adolescents were discussed to promote positive peer pressure and to minimise negative peer pressure. These guidelines included strategies to motivate adolescents and to promote positive peer relationships. / Psychology of Education / M. Ed. (Psychology of Education)

Text in Afrikaans / Die doel van opvoeding is om die kind tot volwassenheid te lei. 'n Volwasse persoon is iemand wat homself ken, 'n inherente sin virwaardes navolg, sedelik selfstandige besluite kan neem en verantwoordelikheid kan aanvaar. Groepdruk belemmer die verwerwing van bogenoemde eienskappe by die adolessent en bemoeilik gevolglik sy opvoeding. Daarom stel opvoedkundiges toenemend meer in groepdruk as fenomeen belang. Die doeI van die ondersoek was om 'n meetinstrument te ontwikkel waarmee adolessente geidentifiseer kan word wat groepdruk moeilik hanteer. Daarbenewens was dit oak die doel om die belangrikste veranderlikes wat verband hou met groepdruk te identifiseer. 'n Literatuurstudie is onderneem met die doel om die fenomeen groepdruk te analiseer, ondersoek in te stel na die meetbaarheid van groepdruk en vas te stel watter faktore met groepdruk verband hou. 'n Meetinstrument is ontwikkel met die doel om groepdruk te meet (betroubaarheidskoeffisient : 0,86). 'n Empiriese ondersoek is uitgevoerwaarby 452 hoerskool adolessente (234 seuns en 228 dogters) betrek is. Benewens groepdruk is verskeie veranderlikes soos verhouding met ouers, verhouding met maats, selfbeeld, waardes, intelligensie en persoonlikheid ook gemeet. Biografiese gegewens soos geslag, ouderdom, demerietes, buitemuurse aktiwiteite en posisie in gesin is ingesluit. Uit die empiriese ondersoek blyk dit dat : • groepdruk 'n afname toon en verander vanaf graad 8 na graad 12; • selfbeeld, ouderdom, populariteit en verhouding met maats as die vernaamste veranderlikes wat met groepdruk verband hou, beskou kan word. Die implikasies van die bevindinge in die literatuurstudie en in die empiriese ondersoek is bespreek met die doel om ouers en onderwysers met riglyne te voorsien wat hulle kan aanwend om adolessente minder kwesbaar vir groepdruk te maak. / The aim of education is to guide the child towards adulthood. An adult is expected to know himself, follow an inherent sense of values, make moral decisions independently and accept responsibility. Group pressure hampers the attainment of the above characteristics during adolescence and therefore makes education problematic. For this reason educationists are taking a growing interest in group pressure as a phenomenon. The aim of this study was to develop a measuring instrument to identify adolescents who find it difficult to deal with group pressure. In addition it was also the aim to determine the most important variables which relate to group pressure. A literature study was undertaken in order to analyse group pressure as a phenomenon, to analyse the measurability of group pressure and to determine which factors relate to group pressure. An instrument was developed to measure group pressure (reliability coefficient: 0,86). An empiricalinvestigation was carried out involving 452 high school adolescents (234 boys and 228 girls). In addition to group pressure, several variables were measured such as the individual's relationship with parents and friends, his self-concept, values, intelligence and personality. Biographical information such as gender, age, number of demerits, extra mural activities and birth order was collated. From the empirical investigation it seems that • group pressure shows a decline from Grade 8 to 12; • self concept, age, popularity and relationship with friends can be considered the most important variables relating to group pressure. The implications of the findings in the literature study and empirical investigation were discussed with the aim to provide parents and teachers with guidelines which they can apply to make adolescents less vulnerable to group pressure. / Psychology of Education / D. Ed. (Sielkundige Opvoedkunde)